Ah, the joys of travel!

Our road to Nice and Cinque Terre was a little bumpy at first...but the second honeymoon we ended up getting was more than worth it! The morning we were all packed and ready to leave on our trip (first Barcelona, Spain, then onto Nice, France then lastly Cinque Terre, Italy and back home again) my sweet dear husband offered to get us, and our host, some pain de chocolat and get a little cash for the road. My husband returned, white as a ghost and sweating already at six am. It seems that the bank had thought that our spending overseas seemed a bit unusual and the $300 + we had spent online on train tickets put our account and card on hold. So, when Alex went to get cash at the ATM a notice came up saying that they were "capturing" the card and it would soon be destroyed, it's vital to know that it is impossible to get your train tickets without the card you bought them with. Super. Naturally, the Brantome bank and our bank back home were both closed. When the Brantome bank opened we convinced them to take our card out of the ATM and hold it for us, quite literally, the bank manager was holding it in front of us gesturing with it. I can't tell you how strong the urge was to snatch it from his hands and run for the border...logic outweighed that instinct.

After hours on the phone with U.S. after hours help, to no avail, we decided to drive the hour + to Bordeaux and pray that they would let us board the train that we were just in time to catch.

Of course they wouldn't let us. So, we had lunch and a little tour of Bordeaux to make it slightly less depressing and went back to Brantome to re-group. Alex remembered that if we canceled our train tickets ahead of time they will reimburse you, thankfully we were able to do that for a portion of the money. We decided to leave the next morning, bright and early for Nice and just skip the Barcelona part. We left very, very, very early and were off. After a long, long, long, train ride we arrived to our hotel I had booked online at five am just before leaving, and despite the beginning of the adventure the hotel actually ended up being adorable and gorgeous!